to her
husband; she was as calm as he was irritable. She was never in a hurry
to move, and never disposed to make a concession. Quietly, steadfastly,
by caution and deliberation, without splendour, without error, she had
beaten him at chess until it led to such dreadful fits of anger that he
had to renounce the game altogether. After every such occasion he would
be at great pains to explain that he had merely been angry with himself.
Nevertheless he felt, and would not let himself think (while she
concluded from incidental heated phrases), that that was not the
complete truth about the outbreak.

Slowly they got through the concealments of that specious explanation.
Temperamentally they were incompatible.

They were profoundly incompatible. In all things she was defensive. She
never came out; never once had she surprised him halfway upon the road
to her. He had to go all the way to her and knock and ring, and then she
answered faithfully. She never surprised him even by unkindness. If he
had a cut finger she would bind it up very skilfully and healingly, but
unless he told her she never discovered he had a cut finger. He was
amazed she did not know of it before it happened. He piped and she did
not dance. That became the formula of his grievance. For several unhappy
years she thwarted him and disappointed him, while he filled her with
dumb inexplicable distresses. He had been at first so gay an activity,
and then he was shattered; fragments of him were still as gay and
attractive as ever, but between were outbreaks of anger, of hostility,
of something very like malignity. Only very slowly did they realise the
truth of their relationship and admit to themselves that the fine bud
of love between them had failed to flower, and only after long years
were they able to delimit boundaries where they had imagined union, and
to become--allies. If it had been reasonably possible for them to part
without mutual injury and recrimination they would have done so, but two
children presently held them, and gradually they had to work out the
broad mutual toleration of their later relations. If there was no love
and delight between them there was a real habitual affection and much
mutual help. She was proud of his steady progress to distinction, proud
of each intimation of respect he won; she admired and respected his
work; she recognised that he had some magic, of liveliness and
unexpectedness that was precious and enviable. So far as